The present invention relates to an application form filling system using a digital pen with a content modification prevention function.
In recent years, a growing number of governments, municipal offices and corporations are transforming written applications and circulars into digital documents to facilitate document management and inquiries. One example of a technology for real-time transforming of information hand-written on an application form into digital data is WO01/48590A1 that describes a digital pen and digital paper.
The digital paper is paper having its surface formed with a special printed dot pattern and printed with a particular document format (FIG. 8). The paper surface is sectioned with virtual lattices of a predetermined size and is assigned a part of a dot pattern formed over a vast area, with dots 82 that are allocated to intersections 81 between virtual lattice lines, and shifted uniquely by a predetermined distance from their associated intersections so that any position on the paper can be identified and located uniquely. A plurality of these dots, for example 6×6 dots, are checked and a unique combination of up, down, left and right deviation values for these 36 dots provides information on an absolute position in the vast planar area. The digital pen comprises a pen that fixes ink on paper to make written characters visible, a camera for reading a dot pattern on the paper surface, a pressure sensor for detecting a writing pressure acting on the pen, an image processor that processes data obtained from the camera and the pressure sensor to generate position information made up of coordinate data on loci of characters-strokes, a memory for temporary storage of the position information, and a wireless transmission device for sending the position information to other devices.
When a user (user) fills in necessary fields in an application from of digital paper using a digital pen, position information is detected based on the dot pattern read by the camera in real time and the pressure sensor detects writing pressure. The position information is stored in memory and transmitted from the wireless transmission device after the completion of form filling. The data received is processed by an analyzer that relates the position information to a document format. Then, after undergoing a character recognition process as necessary, the data becomes an electronic document. Then, in general tasks a plurality of persons in charge successively adds information to the digital paper, such as examiner's sign, approval signature and comments, in a procedure similar to the above by using the digital pen.